


it's so simple but we can't stay

by yttan



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: F/M, there are Feelings and everything hurts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-10-09 03:08:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17398865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yttan/pseuds/yttan
Summary: There are stretches of the night that go like this: a breathless call, a raucous Camero, and the cold wink of the stars.





	it's so simple but we can't stay

**Author's Note:**

> Written pre-TRK. No particular timestamp, though I suppose pre-TRK is most natural. Listening to Halsey's "Drive" while writing this so title from lyrics.

There are stretches of the night that go like this: a breathless call, a raucous Camero, and the cold wink of the stars. On some nights, that stretch takes a detour off the blacktop, down empty gravel lanes where the sound of the Pig echoes, echoes, then stills.

This night, they tuck themselves under a bough of branches on a back road to nowhere. Two bodies lean against the car. Four eyes watch Gansey’s hands. He clenches his hands white-knuckled around the grill of the Pig. The sight dredges up the memory of the same action done by the same hands, but framing Blue’s thighs. When she lets out a long breath, he pushes away from the car.

“We can’t keep doing this,” he says. The edges of the words crumble, fall to the weight of gravity much like Blue and Gansey themselves. It ruins any conviction he tries to impart.

“We shouldn’t keep doing this,” she corrects. It sounds petulant to her own ears, but she doesn’t care. The difference is important to her, somehow. They can keep doing this, just this: riding into the dark until it steals away their trembling pulses and makes them steady. That’s not what he’s referring to, though. They shouldn’t keep doing this: playing fast and close with a deadly promise she doesn’t want to keep.

“Can’t” chains her to fate, “shouldn’t” is merely dangerously foolhardy.

Gansey deflates until his knuckles press into his forehead. “Semantics are not helpful, Jane.”

Out of the corner of his eye he can see her shrug, the contrary twist of her lips. He licks his own.

The Pig’s engine murmurs and pings, joining the chorus of crickets and sway of leaves. The noise fills the space between them, and for a moment Blue thinks Gansey is going to turn, fold himself back into his car, and effectively end their reckless habit.

Instead, Gansey steps toe to toe with her. Blue is struck by the turmoil usually tucked behind Presidential veneer, the boyish fear and longing laid bare. She pushes through the curse that looms between them and traces one finger down the slope of his lips. Gansey’s eyes slide closed and his lips part and Blue’s heart aches.

Blue’s hand drifts down his neck, over his clavicle, to rest over his heart. His body is warm beneath her hand, his heartbeat a metronome. She buries her head against the crook of his neck, her cheek and nose brushing his skin but her mouth carefully distanced from his body. Gansey wraps his arms around her, trapping her hand against his chest.

“I like being alone with you.” She whispers it, and feels at once silly and raw. When Gansey doesn’t respond, she adds, “Sometimes my head feels so busy with – school and Glendower and – and –“ things that she vowed not to tell Gansey, not yet.

Gansey huffs out a laugh. It startles Blue, whose first instinct is indignation and a swift punch in the shoulder before she recognizes the incredulous delight in the sound. “I know the feeling,” he says, countless sleepless nights and soft-edged books and frequent flier miles tucked behind his words.

That's why they both keep coming here. This resonation. Because they know the feeling, the trip of their pulses and the yearning in their souls is not just broadcast to the universe, but mirrored and doubled and harmonized between them.

Blue longs for the stars, for escape in the great wide somewhere. Gansey longs for Glendower, to find and release something from inside his restless soul.

Somewhere between all of that, they both long for each other.

Yeah, they both know the feeling. It hangs between them as they part, fingers lingering on jawlines, thoughts lingering on the space between them as they get back in the Pig and return to Henrietta. 


End file.
